Wilderness of Wires
New Grid, Off Grid, No Grid - a Journey: Part 1
[Note to readers from B. - Water into Stone is preparing to go on the road, exploring current realities of dryland resilience and adaptation! The Interior West’s long dominant models of centralized power and economic systems are being challenged by our rapidly changing climate and burgeoning new technologies. As the days get longer, there will be profiles of life on and off energy, social, and economic power grids — so a brief overview of existing and emerging power transmission grids is in order. Here then, is the first of a three part series…]
“Here was a stupendous possibility. If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed. The sun raises the oceans and winds drive it to distant regions where it remains in delicate balance. If it were in our power to upset it when and wherever desired, this mighty life-sustaining stream could be at will controlled. We could irrigate arid deserts; create lakes and rivers and provide motive power in unlimited amounts. This would be the most efficient way of harnessing the sun to the uses of man.” — Nikola Tesla, from My Inventions: V. - The Magnifying Transmitter [The Electrical Experimenter, June 1919]
The Magnifying Transmitter’s initial field trials took place in a pasture not far from where I first experienced the sun’s powers, though I came along a few decades too late to see the impressive pyrotechnics of Nikola Tesla’s grandiose vision. He had come to the foot of the Colorado’s Rocky Mountains for the lightning storms, and had built a machine to harness electricity, magnify it and project it through air and landmasses — predictably, there were a few mishaps along the way (one of which blacked out the town’s electrical power grid), but in a few months he became convinced that he had set the earth in an electrical resonance of 150,000 oscillations per second, making power available to power any machine tapping into it.
According to the inventor, a childhood memory of a thrown snowball that triggered an avalanche inspired a lifelong fascination with the magnification of feeble actions. Some years later, observing a thunderstorm’s electrical discharge led him to visualize a system of limitless power being transmitted via a “World Wireless” technology. After emigrating from Austria to the United States in 1884, he spent a few months working for Thomas Edison on direct current (DC) electrical devices, then left to develop his own inventions. Tesla soon became an early proponent and key inventor in the budding alternating current (AC) industry, catching the attention of wealthy investors enough to pursue his self-described ‘stupendous possibility.’ Throughout his long life thereafter, worldwide acclaim seemed just ahead, with detractors frustrating and derailing his grandest successes — at least by his admirers’ telling, though in the 123 years since the inventor set my home range temporarily abuzz (sorry, couldn’t resist the cheap laugh on that one), his results have failed to be replicated. This story of human desire to transform life on earth seems an apt way to begin a look at visions of limitless power and power grids, because while humans have come a long way in ‘harnessing’ the sun’s energy, transmitting the results is at best an expanded version of the wired system that Tesla overwhelmed with his experiments.
The U. S. power line networks above are depicted with successively lighter colors as they diminish in power-carrying capacity. Note that large areas, especially throughout the west, are devoid of bold lines and that the mid-continent has few major connections to the spiderwebs of lines further east and south. This doesn’t mean that Nikola Tesla’s ‘World Wireless’ is now a reality (except in the transfer of bits of digitized data to and from wired/wireless moderns’ phone apps, etc.). Without diving into the physics of matter, it does mean that no matter how much electricity is generated or required for any region, the amount transmitted cannot exceed that part of the nationwide grid’s capacity. Through a century of negotiations and a good bit of trial and error, a manageable system has been developed to produce and move enough electricity where needed through high voltage DC (direct current) interconnections between the regions. When transportable fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) fed the vast majority of generating plants, with hydropower a predictably ‘renewable’ seasonal boon, these worked well enough most of the time. The times though, they are a changing…
Based on current climate predictions, the most efficient regions in the United States for the fastest growing sectors of electricity production are in the southwest (solar) and midwest (wind), while the highest demand for electricity is in the northeast and the south — a subject of much ongoing concern and debate, luckily leavened by a fair amount of research and education across the country and crossing of political borderlines. I found the map below in an educational module developed for North Dakota students and the general public by a consortium of energy companies. While the overall curriculum reflects the current investments of its funders, the module on renewable power is interesting in what it says about the companies’ future interests. The overlays of potential energy sources and current transmission lines below might help to visualize the problem of getting electricity to where and when it’s needed in the future…
As solar and wind energy resources are increasingly tapped for utility-scale electrical production, long-distance grid capacity is not keeping up. Already, when the Pacific Northwest’s hydroelectric production reaches its peak during early summer high river flows, wind energy projects are being idled because the grid is unable to accommodate their output.
Next we’ll be turning to the National Energy Renewal Laboratory again, this time for a look at an Interconnections Seam Study, because according to multiple analyses the biggest bottlenecks are along the seams between the major grids. The dotted black lines (see the map below) mark transmission boundaries between the Western, Eastern, and Texas Interconnection grids — each of which is an independently synchronized AC power delivery system. The grids are currently connected to each other by a limited number of higher voltage DC power lines that cross the seams. (Note: Alaska and Hawaii each have their own grids, which are outside the parameters of this study).
The map also shows projected renewable power development regions, and major population centers (red dots). These obviously do not follow the contours of current power grid management boundaries, so as more renewable power is produced there will be more projects periodically idled by lack of grid capacity, unless increasing transmission and storage capacity is part of the equation. The images below show four choices that face anybody hoping to develop the renewable resources of these regions enough to fill the energy gaps left by obsolescing coal and oil-fired plants.
Below is an animated model of the study’s choice of the highest efficiency design, a racetrack-style grid in action in 2038. Legend at screen left shows energy sources and battery storage facilities at various points along the grid. Some readers will note that the energy sources include nuclear and gas plants, but we’ll leave the renewability of these sources to another post, another day…
While the above model envisions a nationwide High Voltage Direct Current System (HVDC) 15 years on from now, a smaller version of an interconnected racetrack transmission system, called Colorado’s Power Pathway by its developers, is inching ever closer to the installation phase on some drylands not far east of Nikola Tesla’s ill-fated magnifying transmitter experiments. Here’s a link to veteran Colorado journalist Allen Best’s publication about energy transitions, Big Pivots, for an overview of this project. For more context and an update on the power line, check the Colorado Sun’s coverage of eastern Colorado’s renewable energy boom.
What about off grid, or no grid needed living, you ask? In a life on and around the drylands, I’ve sampled aspects of each of these, with at times checkered results — up next, we’ll explore “Batteries and Windmills - Entering the Off Grid Zone.” Until then, take care of yourself, and help someone out along the way. - B
For a sympathetic deep dive into all things Nikola Tesla, check this link.
For a deeper dive into energy issues, here are three perspectives I’ve found interesting: the previously mentioned Big Pivots; and a couple of Substack publications — Volts and Distilled.
For those of you ready to jump on the renewable energy train as it gathers steam, click this NREL link, and get animated with 11 more video models of possible energy futures from the Interconnections Seam Study team.
Great research 👍. How about geothermal in the Pacific NW? The 2022 PNLL work in geothermal research and lithium extraction is very promising.